Mary has received less attention than she deserves. Biographers have written off Mary as a person of inferior breeding compared to the other wives and criticized her for sacrificing her career in journalism to become Hemingway’s wife. They have portrayed her as a mere victim of Hemingway’s irrational wrath and womanizing. Her autobiography, How it Was, has been criticized for its lack of insight. Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn, went so far as to dismiss Mary as a “maggot of history” for her work on the Hemingway papers and manuscripts.
Hemingway’s Widow presents a different picture. Going beyond her memoir, studying her correspondence, journals, and diaries, and interviewing those who knew her, we find a spirited, determined, calculating, pragmatic, yet charming person. She loved Ernest Hemingway deeply and created an environment in which he could work. She believed in his genius and made sacrifices for his art. Mary tried to save him from depression, booze, high blood pressure, and ultimately, aggressive mental illness and suicide. Following his death, Mary worked hard to enhance and promote his literary legacy.